Playbar with a mind of its own
I have been using Sonos since 2010 and have four different players ZP90, ZP120, Play 1 and Playbar. It runs, obviously, under Sonos 1. Over the years it has all worked very well indeed although the CR 200 control unit, which was miles ahead of the phone app that I now have to use, has stopped charging which is unfortunate but Sonos had abandoned this excellent piece of kit years ago, I suppose, because it was regarded as too costly when an app was no extra cost.
I now have a problem that I am in the process of trying to solve.
The problem is that at random or irregular intervals the Playbar (and only the Playbar), which is attached to the TV and set to play the TV sound, suddenly and without warning plays music. This can happen perhaps three or more times a day or it might not happen for several days. It is always one particular recording from my Music Library (Apocalyptica plays Metallica, since you asked, something of an acquired taste and not greatly appreciated by the OH), although not always the same track. Sonos shows no queue. I can override the problem by reassigning the Playbar to TV, if I am there. As far as I know, this has never happened when the TV is actually being played.
As an aside, I have tried looking on a forum or two but this situation is not, in my view, amenable to concise and unambiguous search terms so I have not found anything although there may be something there somewhere; if so, a link would be appreciated.
Why this occurs I do not yet understand but it may be relevant that I recently retired my old Netgear Stora NAS that had given over 10 years of good service with one disc replacement which went perfectly. I now have a Synology DS220+ which seems a fine device that offers abundant facilities beyond my dreams and my abilities to use. This uses DS 6.2 as its operating system, as I think that to change to DS 7 would eliminate SMB 1 and thus be useless for Sonos. (Why they do not update the software to use SMB 3 I do not know). I think that I could get round that by using a container under Docker but I dare not try it as I do not think that I can return to 6.2 if I fail, the most likely outcome of my first brush with Linux.
The NAS, and my phone, has DS Audio installed and I have used this with the phone and can connect directly to any of the Sonos components (and a Chromecast Audio which would then play through the ZP 120). Interestingly, the phone then shows the IP addresses of all the Sonos components and there are no duplications.
I am fairly sure that I last did this, as an experiment, with that same recording of Apocalyptica.
I am about to set out on some steps that, hopefully, will resolve this problem and allow me to diagnose where the problem actually lies but as I start these, I would like to know if anyone has had this issue and been able to solve it.
The steps that I intend to try are as follows:
1 Reboot router and phone – already done, several time, to no avail.
2 Disconnect the Playbar and reconnect after a short period of time – again already done, to no avail.
3 Shut down the NAS and restart – yet to do.
4 Shut down all Sonos components and then restart – yet to do
5 Shut down NAS and all Sonos and restart, NAS first
6 Shut down everything and restart in Router, NAS Sonos order.
7 Wait for it to occur and leave it (at little or no volume) until the end of the recording is reached.
I would appreciate any advice on these steps or, indeed, any others that might help. Also, I do not, at this stage, intend to try a factory reset.
Once I have carried out these steps out and succeeded, or failed, I will document the process on this fourm. Please understand that my IT abilities are somewhat limited and I would thus appreciate any advice at all that can help
Thanks